


Final Liturgy

by grayglube



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Angst, Dubious Consent, F/M, Possessed Kate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-25
Updated: 2014-09-25
Packaged: 2018-02-18 19:08:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2359022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grayglube/pseuds/grayglube
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“The Lord is in his holy temple, the Lord’s throne is in heaven: his eyes behold, his eyelids try, the children of men. The Lord trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Final Liturgy

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Postseason 1, Kate/Richie, Possessed Kate, slight dubcon feels, angst. Basically, Santanico’s body just isn’t what the Goddess wants anymore and so Kate gives herself up because it’s what God wants her to do. I wrote this in two nights, I don’t think I’ve cranked anything out that fast before. I like it, my partner in crime ohyellowbird thinks I’m mean. I am. Though, I tried not to be. (Not really, not at all)

**Final Liturgy**

**Summary:** “The Lord is in his holy temple, the Lord’s throne is in heaven: his eyes behold, his eyelids try, the children of men. The Lord trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.”

* * *

 

Something looks out of her eyes and it’s her and _Her_. It. And a goddess doesn’t look at a man like a woman. There’s an appraisal, but more than that, dismissal and the offhand disinterest because what’s a man to a goddess. Not even on the same plane of existence, he’s seen the one she’s on now, and exists in the in-between.

 

Carlos had been Santanico Pandemonium’s favorite. Greedy or not.

 

And Richie is hers. Because his soul is damned and she thinks maybe everyone deserves salvation.

 

People change, so do the unkillable.

 

But the goddess is a girl again, soft and sleepy and warm with fingers curled like dead spider legs and her knees tucked up, half faced on a pillow and she’s silent on the couch in a room where _She_ used to drink and dance and bathe and be worshiped in.

 

There’s a kiddish look of irritation and blame making a pout of her mouth and her eyebrows come together in a wrinkle. He wonders if her conviction of faith is keeping the unkillable part of her tucked away, cloistered and veiled but not silent. No, _She_ always talks. Sings. Hums. A reminder, like perfume left on sheets or the ricochet of a gun an old note left on a refrigerator.

* * *

 

She speaks in psalms. Not always, mostly when the others come. They parade her to the statue, unpacked and repainted, bowls of blood and cum and wine at its feet. Desert sand carrying disease and cheap beer, cut hair from trafficked children, lucky bullets, the detritus of belief and she squirms in their hands, annoyed, unruly and finally lets them sit her in a chair and kneel at her feet.

 

They tell her to give herself over to _Her_.

 

As if it’s easy. Preacher’s daughter who, for all her teenage ways, is a true believer. Sweetly so, and perhaps in some old way that still considered animal slaughter and sex holy. The early years of Christendom. Pure and near rule free, when God was a warrior of righteousness instead of a Sunday school song played on a guitar.

 

“How say ye to my soul, flee as a bird to your mountain?”

 

Her voice lacks vital intonation. Quiet and Richie thinks someone might ask her to speak up, he rolls his eyes. Her face falls when she sees. Hurt deeply by misunderstanding. And then all the softness is gone, shellac dry and set.

 

“For, lo, the wicked bend their bow, they make ready their arrow upon the string, that they may privily shoot at the upright in heart. If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?”

 

Someone chuckles. Men shuffle their feet, uncomfortable and nervous. New avatars of the Nine.

 

“The Lord is in his holy temple, the Lord’s throne is in heaven: his eyes behold, his eyelids try, the children of men. The Lord trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.”

 

She’s getting louder and everyone gets a bit more nervous as they let her go on longer than they would normally allow. Richie figures it’s time to take her back to her room. She goes with him. Behind him, in harsh half whispers she ignores his genuine question of if she knows anything else by heart, like a poem about flowers or an nineties song of Iliad proportions, Baby Got Back, perhaps. But, she continues her Psalm.

 

In the cast metal tub she mumbles against wet island knees, her sops water over her back, “Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and a horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup. For the righteous Lord loveth righteousness; his countenance doth behold the upright.”

 

And it’s a coincidence (or fated: kismet, destiny) that two cartel tunnels collapse, a trafficked crate of young nubile senoritas is searched by customs, sand storm blows in and strips the paint off their Goddesses idol visage.

 

Kate doesn’t smile, she smokes one of his cigarettes and turns to face the back of the couch having heard the news. She tells him while she cuts, ruffs, bridges a deck of cards “It’s a pact, you know? And, it’s always about passage. Safe passage to somewhere else.”

 

“Somewhere better.” He supplies the words for her.

 

She curls, twists her spine, looks at him, stare luke-warm, “Not really.”

 

“Sacrifices, you know the bible ones but there’s Agamemnon giving his daughter to Artemis to cross the sea to Troy and…” He gives a half-grin around his cigarette, it wags and he lays out cards. It’s solitaire but he can see signs in it. She cuts him short, “It’s about belief,” stops and goes on, sitting up and folding her legs to the side, “Not sacrifice, God is not cruel,” her fingers card through her hair.” The strong don’t have to be.”

 

She’ll tell him the stories she remembers from teaching Sunday school, how Job was spared, how forty years in the desert was a journey and the birth of a necessary tribe of the righteous. She’s a lot like her daddy but her favorite book is Revelations.

 

“What about what God does when he’s angry?”

 

“He is merciless.”

 

And Richie knows the difference once she speaks. He hums, nods. Scans the cards on the table. He presses a finger to the suit of a card. “That’s you.” 

* * *

 

The goddess, depending on the girl, can be malleable or unmovable. Santanico gave blessings besides just dancing with a snake between her legs or lazily swinging around a pole. There’s worship in that too, and, goddesses have to get their prayers from somewhere, he figures. Blood is only half the diet.

 

Kate looks the same as she did before, he can’t tell if she’s starving. She’s a little martyr.

 

He knows the stories about girl martyrs. They die.

 

Prepubescent Saint Agnes dragged to the brothel, Euphemia eaten by a bear, Lucia who took out her own eyes and could not be moved sentenced to defilement and then the sword, Cecilia who took three sharp whacks and died three gruesome days later, Ludmila strangled with her veil, Emerentia stoned by a mob, Agatha who had her tits ripped off.

 

Somehow they all escape defilement.

 

The Nine threaten and cajole, mostly he’s currency.

 

She feeds from him.

 

Though, he muses with head lolling, a private moment, her self-control _is_ biblical in scope the actual application isn’t quite up to par. Because bible stories have a lot of failing and forgiveness and she’s been bred, fed and raised on that diet of sacraments.

 

He comments on the singularity of her appetite and she tells him not to talk like that.

 

It’s the ultimate grift, a long con. Santanico. Freedom. She wanted to be free. But things needed to be taken care of, contingencies and after five hundred years the plan came to fruition.

 

But after five-hundred years a girl can get bored with her hair. It’s trite and he’s been played.

* * *

 

Seth had Kate tagging behind like Scooby Doo to Shaggy.

 

Richie finds out in later conversation she didn’t just tag along, and for what it’s worth Richie knew, though he figured for all his brother’s talk underage by a year was a quickly solved deterrent within a few months, and no crazy ex around to find the new love nest.

 

Turns out all it took to turn his brother was a sweet smile, the sly one she still has, and half of her parent’s life insurance policies.

 

And Seth taught her all the great pigeon drops, his coin tricks and how to change raising. In return there’s the house and the church her father left behind for her and something called sanctuary for his brother while the heat died down. Mexico smelt wrong, desert ozone, booze, mud, and blood like a Johnny Cash song. El Rey. King of the mountain.

 

And Santanico turned out to be a better grifter than him, he’d have said better than Seth but, then again, Seth got caught and Richie’s free. Not as much as he’d like, but as much as he knows what to do with.

 

Kate in a state of benign expectation, sitting in a back church room cleaning up from Sunday school, kiddies sprinkled out in the parking lot already with mommies and daddies ready to go to the playground or the grocery store. She’s standing with empty juice boxes in one hand, grape and Hawaiian punch dripping down her fingers and wrist when she squeezes them in surprise, he can see the tiny plastic straws drip juice like rain on leaves, other hand with broken crayolas and a coloring book of Jacob’s coat of many colors, a crayon rips from its sliver of construction paperish wrapping and drops to the floor.

 

He doesn’t know, at the time, though before then he’d seen the pattern the dots in the Seurat making the final museum piece. Framed, light up, cordoned off and set back from the onlookers, and somewhere after that night at the temple he’d forgotten and now in the warm Texas afternoon in a county he can’t remember he’s in another sort of temple and Kate turns to throw the juice boxes in hump of a black garbage bag at her feet.

 

Tiny toes painted a heathen shade of red. She puts the crayons in the box.

 

“You had it in your hand.” He says. And she nods. Has known this day was coming, remembered when he forgot. She’d held his knife, not for long, a small moment in what is about to stretch into eternity. She’s been doomed to this. A sacrifice, a lamb trained not to bleat or struggle against the knife.

 

“You’ll help me.” Statement intonation, no question mark. Kate’s eyes on Santanico and her chin cuts down once, assent and understanding and the curtness of a wordless request for _Her_ to cut the shit. Kate understands, has for awhile.

 

The nature of evil, true evil is in the juxtaposition of goodness: the only way it can really flourish. Shades of grey make everything bleed like a wet newspaper and no one can read the horoscope or the winning racehorse names once the daily gets rained on.

 

The goddess needs a backdrop she’ll show up the best against, and Kate glows lily white and gold like a miniature mother of mercies.

 

“I been stuck for five hundred years in my captivity, it’s too late to try to forget.”

 

Kate nods. Understanding, there’s truth and a tiredness that’s pervasive and complete in what Santanico is saying and even now Richie will do what _She_ asks. Later, with Kate he’ll tell her there was no choice. She’ll answer him and he will not like her answer.

 

Sweet voice saying: _“But, you know, I didn’t say anything to you. That day. I could have changed your mind but then you’d be dead.”_ And there won’t be any irony in the way she says it, just a quiet, simple fact with no rebuttal.

 

But in the church her silence is stony. She sits. Richie stands, watches the last of the afternoon’s parishioners leave, bless each other, get into their cars and drive forward to another week’s worth of sin.

 

She pushes pages in a bible like a lazy blind person skimming braille, Santanico‘s husky laughter wafts to him. “The time for that is done.”

 

“You are a guest in God’s house.  His temple, his time.” Kate chides.

 

“Mine soon.” It’s a higher toned goad, a nod accompanies and _Her_ giggle is sweet and high.

 

Richie’s jaw clenches, he doesn’t want to bring her by force, there’s no need for anything like that.

 

Kate looks at the table bible’s words, perfunctory and required, “Sit thou as my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.”

 

“I like that one.”

 

“The Lord shall send the rod of thy strength out of Zion: rule thou in the midst of thine enemies. Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth.”

 

Richie frowns, the crackle of impatience like frisson on his skin. Not any sort of biblical backlash, it’s _her_ getting bored, agitated like a trapped cat.

 

“Don’t you have to memorize those? It’s cheating if you have to read it out of the book.” He deadpans. Kate’s eyes shut, and she pushes the book away, it crosses the table with a fast slide of sound and _her_ nails rasp the gold page edges with a scritch-scratch.

 

She starts, verbatim, memorized and studied and used as a prayer he discovers later, “The Lord at thy right hand shall strike through _kings_ in the day of his wrath. He shall j _udge_ among the heathen, he shall _fill_ the places with the dead bodies,” and quietly with wide eyes and final theatrical softness that only sounds that way because it’s hard to recognize true sincerity and true belief in what is being said, “He shall wound the heads over many countries. He shall drink of the brook in the way: therefore shall he lift up the head.”

 

“You’ve prayed. It’s time now. You don’t have anyone to say goodbye to.”

 

Kate nods. Leads the way. She lives next door. The house where she was born and grew up and saw her mother die slowly, inside without ever understanding until late after she was already gone, the house her father left behind in his grief and denials of God. Kate lives there. The new Pastor doesn’t mind, has taken her in but the new Pastor isn’t home and it’s just them all next door in the kitchen as she writes a note that says it’s time for her to start on a new path, that God has guided her and that she will keep them in her prayers and that she is sorry for leaving and the pain of her absence.

 

Richie reads it to make sure there’s nothing in it, no nose scratching or police codes, nothing but good intentions and not enough to be the complete truth.

 

Later, she’ll say it was all true. God set her on a path. Her path. The one only she could walk down.

 

Her God is as bright and terrible as any other and has his own sort of warriors that find strength in sunlight, ones that walk through valleys and shadows of death, ones that wield flaming swords, like badass motherfuckers Seth might say if they spoke again, and now, he looks at Kate and she’s on fire and he is always cold.

 

Santanico goes with Kate into her bedroom. Santanico shuts the door and Kate opens it.

 

He thinks, in that moment, with sticky Hawaiian punch stains still on her fingers, and red toenails, that it’s _just_ Kate, but when she staggers and holds a hand to the wall and the empty room behind her has been emptied of things she’ll take with her, _She_ looks up at him. And, it isn’t just Kate.

 

He takes her bag and they drive away.

* * *

 

Seth would have grit his teeth at the mockery they make. A new temple, in the shape of one she loves, loved, hates when it’s _Her_ instead of Kate really looking at the suffering Jesus with his crown of thorns.

 

But Richie knows something, dots up close but moving further away and the picture is getting clearer and Kate’s smile is brighter than it has ever been in the two years since he brought _Her_ back to Mexico.

 

He almost didn’t. Doesn’t matter now. Kate’s learned a lot, from him in the course of their sentence to eternity as slave and slave of slave, and of course, his brother.

 

But Kate stands before the pews next to a nut brown preacher man, ordained but wearing a skin that will shed, she wears pastel yellow or soft pinks, white Sunday shoes and sometimes a dark blue shawl that makes him think of the Virgin Mary on a candle in a grocery store, but somehow instead of the lurid colors of a prayer candle it’s makes her lighter. Juxtaposed, as always.

 

She smiles 1000 watt white and the penitent and meek call her Miss Kate.

 

He sits in the back pew and watches her give the pay-off, the convincer, conning everyone, everyone but the people who come in from the sun. He cradles the back of the pew with his arms, smiles like a wolf and watches the way her hands move over ones reaching out to clasp hers in good faith and blessing.

 

The nine acolytes sit across the aisle, squirming on their pew and sweating in their suits.

* * *

 

When he brought _Her_ back they sneered, she smiled back, walked past, lay down on the couch in the prepared cage they’d made for their captive queen. It’s a rough start.

 

It lasts for a year. But eventually her strange compliance and Texan ways humor them, if not forms any actual sort of worship, like they should. But the Nine on high say let her do as she pleases and the avatars obey as best they can, greedy and mean and spoiled by the modern times they don’t find wholesome as refreshing and sweet and welcome as Richie does.

 

She wouldn’t wear what was left over from the bar. Black sequined things and crimson colored feathers, silk robes cut short and appliqued with snakes, stockings with garters and shirts that were meant for bigger breasts.

 

For a week she wears the same jeans, sweater, her bare feet are delicate and she lets him paint her nails. It felt intimate.

 

He’d ask how she felt even though he knew.

 

“Hungry.”

* * *

 

She tries hard to abstain, gorges on viscera and offal, but eventually she’s knee to chest, arms curled around her belly, too racked by the gnawed feeling of having gone too long from the fount of someone’s throat, not someone’s, not anyone’s, just his.

 

And that’s the thing.

 

She’s different but the same. Fighting something, like she can win, something that’s been well fed for five hundred years, being put on a diet, her insides are cranky, and Richie can hear _Her_ screaming and Kate screaming back, righteous, furious, enraged.

 

And finally he comes to a conclusion: that she’s never going to ask.

 

Sacrifice and willingness and he goes.

 

Over the edge of the bed, white linens, netted, bleached wood, everything is light and pretty and sunbaked. Flowers and warmth and light, but there are no windows and the door and hall and all the other rooms that are hers are set back behind stronger ones, only unlocked for good fucking reasons, which are never hers.

 

“You need to eat.”

 

There’s a cold and congealed, now brick hard, slab of something on thin china across the room. Untouched.

 

“I can’t eat that. It smells wrong.”

 

“Because it’s dead.”

 

He pulls back the sheets as she sits up, face creased by the pillows. The extra year or two she added on before he found her has made her features different, older, less kiddish, not womanly but something else. More feline than reptile. Her body, leaner from poor nutritional value days on the road with Seth and no more home cooked meals, late nights, she smokes lucky strikes, and her lips are paler than the rest of her face.

 

But she’s grown up. Slim cut like the cigarette. Hair longer and hungry eyes, looking at his throat.

 

“You’re going to anyway, eventually. So, do it. You don’t want to hurt me. Like last time.”

 

Last time. She needed new sheets and her favorite slippers got blood all over them. He’d gurgled when his throat was chop meat, his voice rough for days. After, blood moving from spine to dick. Angel lust.

 

This time. Her shoulders slip down against the pillows propped up, and she tilts back her head, reaches out a hand and he bares his throat over her mouth. She mangled him like a tiger would have, last time.

 

There’s a pause. Silent and heavy and she’s breathing ragged, he turns his head, watches her chest move the covers like the ocean, her pajamas are lilac today, with buttons and long sleeves and a collar with white piping. She also wears pajamas, gauzy cottons and slinky heaviness, Easter colors and floral patterns and things that don’t look right because she’s not a little girl under them.

 

“Should we put a towel down?”

 

He cajoles, “Haven’t heard that since highschool.”

 

Her brow wrinkles, he doesn’t see it, she mutters a sound and something next to his ear _shincks_. His groin washes with heat and prickles even before the puncture, he hears the pop of skin, fingers curling white sheets inside his fist, the other hand on the edge of the mattress, nail beds blanching and he grunts.

 

She sucks up a little bit of what he’s thinking too, it makes things different between them, between him and Kate, _She_ always knows what he’s thinking. But Kate is tentative, too slow, no greed in the way her mouth moves now, she’s learned from before, from previous satiation and the guilty aftermath of her mouth painted red, the same bright color of her nail polish, and his thoughts in her throat sliding down to feed her and all the dots of color that he’s held in his mind in her thoughts, making new patterns of things. Hanging the make believe art up in a gallery buried brain deep.

 

And why should it matter _now_. Now it doesn’t matter how old they were or what they had and hadn’t done because they’re eternal now. And if a wet shit like Carlos did it for five-hundred years, well then he’s got infinitely more stamina. He can go on for as long as she needs, he figures. Wants.

 

He presses fingers to the back of her head, rubbing her scalp, hair making a sound under his fingertips, forcing her face closer, nose pressed under his chin, throat gulping down the hot spice of metal in her mouth.

 

And she’s digging with her other hand under his scapula, holding herself up, soon she won’t be slumping or pale mouthed and in pain. She’ll be on fire and flushed.

 

She pulls back, lips smacking, tongue lascivious on her gums and teeth and reaching for the slashes of red all over her cheeks and under her nose. Her teeth click when her mouth shuts and she’s wild eyed staring at him, nostrils flaring, face human, but sharp and bright pink under the eyes and over the cheeks and down her chest where her pajamas gape away from her skin, a button undone and he glances, small breasts and the puffy pink of sleepy nipples, but her clavicles push out when she breathes and her eyes are mesmeric, cobra swaying to music he can’t hear, he’s fucking hard as her nipples tighten and peak and darken to dusky rosette.

 

He’s like a rock. Always is after. It’s the venom. She ignores it because he does, if she notices at all.

 

Her inhales are still rough and her hand is pushing through the hard pomade, ruining the entire look of clean cut suited slave. She shuts her eyes, brows moving like she’s sleepily listening to someone tell her something, a suggestion. It’s still Kate when they open again, but her fingers are bold down the front of his throat and he figures she might say fuck it this time and not leave him to his priapism alone as she smolders in her virginal bed in her good girl pajamas worrying about blood stains and the shame she can taste in her mouth.

 

She’s pulling through his hair, hard, moving his head, looking at his face, eyes switching like a tail, back and forth, and his try to keep them still, like a thumb war, and she holds her breath and when his mouth parts, tongue moving against the inside of his lips, he can taste the scents in the air, his blood, like tabasco and horchata, and the detergent of her bed linens and then more than is usual her, after she’s fed, sated in one way, aching in another.

 

Stronger this time, her eyes holding his while her spare hand under the mounds of blankets in her lap is pushed down inside her pajamas and soft cotton undies, pushing through and in all the slick, hot, wet she’s got between her legs.

 

And she yanks his head back, eyes again, animal hypnotism, her chin rises and the tendons of her throat stretch, neck  tilting and rolling onto her shoulders, mouth closed because then she’d taste him on the air, if she knows his need it might just makes things more fucked.

 

When she rises on her knees and resettles he knows she’s pushed her fingers inside, deep strokes, and he wonders if she’d touched herself before, before or after Sunday service, and her chest heaves too suddenly to be anything but a reaction, she’s in his head, listening, and his eyes lid, desperately he wants to push her back, cover her up, his fingers make moves to pull back the blankets she’s fucking herself under, but rough ones in his hair, nails pricking his scalp and behind his ear and a cut of her head to the side in silent negation make then still as stone.

 

The mattress bounces, gently and her head starts to hang, under the fall of her hair her eyes poke out, groping gaze, eyelids half-shut, and as she crests she puts her forehead to his chin, slipping to his bobbing throat and her mouth opening, tasting finally, the breaking sound from deep inside her chest she lets escape from between her lips makes his pulse spike, and her teeth click shut again.

 

He can see the back of her hips circling moving back and forth, the tilting as she moves on her fingers, her bare feet over her shoulder, fronts flat on the bed, knees bent out, she’s against his chest and throat and he can’t touch her because she’s a dream. Real but not, intangible. An illusion, momentary image of something, the magic trick, and the story you tell a mark.

 

But she’s real.

 

And then she tells him to go.

 

He batters himself, cock red and raw, later, in his own bed where he’s been for a long time, he wonders if Kate’s asleep, he doesn’t know but _She_ comes to him wearing her face in his dream and soothes him with her tongue and mouth and where she’s wet between her legs.

* * *

 

“You didn’t even try.”

 

“I was waiting.”

 

“For what?” _Life to start,_ Her _, Him, Seth, baby Jesus, her brother._

 

“To start on the path. I prayed and I knew what I was going to have to do, what he needed me to do.”

 

“Who?”

 

“God.”

 

“What?”

 

“Free that girl. And take into me the evil which needed to be put away.”

 

“But _She_ isn’t put away, she’s behind your eyes when they’re open, and she’s in your mouth when you feed.  

 

Her face is expressionless.

 

“She’s in your guts when she’s hungry, and she’s in your cunt when she wants to fuck.”

 

Her mouth purses. Disgust. Contempt.

 

“As long as I keep her in me, then she isn’t anywhere else. God makes warriors to fight the dark and perpetual night in our hearts and prophets to see his will and holy men to speak it and angels to guide his flock and sentinels to guard his kingdom on earth.”

 

“You’re not a sentinel, you’re a prison warden locked in the same cell.”

 

“It can go whenever it wants, it just has to go _back_. It does not belong here, and neither do those who have tasted evil. Shadow and valley and death, etcetera.”

 

“And badass motherfuckers.”

 

“Amen.”

* * *

 

Like mating snakes they curl together. At night, when he dreams. Now he’s awake.

 

She’s freshly fed but he’s starving.

 

Again, in his head. She’s there. Kate. The other has been sleeping, more than usual. Quiet, compliant, losing.

 

And again, her venom in his veins has him flushed and feverish, heavy and achy, he’d bob like a buoy and cry like a little boy if she unzipped him.

 

Her eyes are steely when she hears him think. He’s bitter. He’s starting to reconsider the amount of work that goes into five hundred years of feeding a greedy girl who won’t so much as look at it, let alone touch it.

 

“You want that?”

 

She says it out loud, tongue lapping inside her mouth, tasting, testing his scent.

 

“You want me to see it?”

 

Five years.

 

Seven actually, if you go from the beginning.

 

And finally. Finally she talks after and says something besides something that means:  ‘leave me alone now.’

 

It’s just before dawn, and she’s getting sleepy.

 

When she’s sleepy she gets mean, or unfunny and cruel. It bruises him. Makes him cold. He hisses in her face. She pushes, stronger now, and he’s weak, pushed to the end of the bed like a pet at bedtime.

 

“Show me.”

 

Like it’s a dare.

 

Double dog dare ya.

 

And he’s naked and snakish next to her bed and his dick is red and weepy. She looks at it for a long time. He starts to follow the pulse in her neck, the beats he can see flaring fluorescent pink and red under the skin and his eyes see heat and his tongue can taste everything.

 

Her humming blood and heaven’s gate between her legs.

 

He’s hardly been a celibate food source, but she’s a regular convent kept secret. Her mouth opens, eyes flicking back and forth, yellow, hazel, “Hungry?”

 

He still sees things. Not lately, except now, noise fades and the edges flare and she’s leaned back with open legs and snake eyes on and the puncture of them between groin and thigh, and _She’s_ nodding.

 

And then that’s gone and she’s shaking her head ‘no’ with mouth clamped shut.

 

“Pants on fire.”

 

His tongue flicks once, twice, curls back between his lips. He steps close, she looks up and he puts his palm on her hot cheek, knuckles down her collar and a finger pulling down her bottom lip, the snap of her fangs nicking and her eyes shutting, opening up again as the same shade of hazel-brown.

 

He unthreads buttons, flippant and pushing the sides of her pajamas apart and she looks at him like he’s betraying her.

 

“Don’t look at me like that. Like you don’t want me to.” He tells her. She frowns up at him, sits down on her haunches. _She_ hisses. All sibilant and no words but it sounds wanting.

 

She shrugs off her top and he crouches, drags her bottoms off from around her ankles and as she presses over and settles her shoulders against pillows that haven’t lost their shape yet he stretches over as her fingers crawl up over the bridge of his nose and smooth over his brow, flatter now, scaled.

 

He tastes the air as she prods his fangs, pushes on them, forward from behind and there’s the quick drip of venom down her wrist and precum on her navel.

 

“That _hurts_.” He warns, hand pushes hers away and he mutters, “ouch”, licking his gum line and his teeth.

 

She skims hands all over him, up on his elbows and knees and he feels like Moses at the Red Sea when he sits up and pushes open her knees, no undies and her eyes are closed and her chest is still.

 

 _She’s_ speaking to her.

 

He can see it in the way her face wrinkles and nose scrunches, the fight under her skin and the way her features change, relax, scale, skin over, eyes, yellow, then shut again and he slips a finger pad between the folds of her sex, unsealed and open she squirms, he’s not really doing anything, just biding time while she figures it out and he throbs.

 

He pushes and plays, looking down at what he’s doing and up at her fangs, out again and she sighs, “I can taste that.”

 

“This?” He’s one finger, knuckle deep inside, her body happy hugging him. She nods.

 

He does too.

 

“Snakes breathe a little through the cloaca, it’s sort of like a mouth.”

 

“Don’t call it that.”

 

“Don’t call what a what? You said you were hungry, I already fed you one way.”

 

“I don’t like it when you say stuff like that.”

 

“You don’t have any vestigial claws,” his finger ticks time back and forth inside, feeling her out, finding nothing strange. Her mouth opens to start chastising again but he speaks first, asks, “Is She still talking to you?”

 

“No.”

 

He stares at her face, and then shuts his eyes but even then he can’t hear anything besides her steady breath.

 

He considers the damp humid heat against his hand, touches a wet finger to the nub of her clit, slicks it and smiles as her knees waft back and forth like curtains in a breeze.

 

“Cherry pie.”

 

Kate cringes.

 

He grins.

 

She sits up and swipes a hand over the bedside table for cigarettes. Her watches her strike the wheel and inhale and blow out and he puts his belly and dick against the bed, pulls at a leg until he’s breathing in wet air.

 

“You’re being really nice, Kate.”

 

She frowns, her heel on his naked shoulder rubbing and she looks off to the side at the wall and he’s suctioned to her skin, teeth stuck in the femoral, drinking her up, tasting everything, every thought and dream and wish and want and it tastes fucking good.

 

And the venom makes her leg twitch and her hips bump up against the side of his face, want everywhere, pulse erratic, sheets wet under her and he pecks the two fresh pricks when he’s done.

 

He’s not really messy when he eats anymore, but the venom is hard to swallow down, he’s perfected the technique of after dinner desserts, the venom makes things sweeter, the sex most of all. Not with Kate, it’s her first time.

 

He’s lost count.

 

But he saves a drip-drop on a fang end, hovering as it thins, ready to drop, make her clit tingle like the artificial stuff they put in lip gloss to make a girl’s lips look like they’re ready for someone’s dick between them, but Kate doesn’t even like when he talks about those things and she can read his thoughts like a big print eye chart.

 

Her legs notch together, he licks his mouth clean, swallows venom back and it burns on the way down.

 

The cigarette is done, his insides feel warm and she’s sprawled on her back, watching the ceiling, the fan spins, for a moment it slows down like the room is jello, syrup, sex and then it speeds back to normal, he brings his eyes back down, wipes his mouth on the back of his hand.

 

His palm on a knee, “What does God say about fornication?”

 

She doesn’t answer.

 

“Why did God give women belly buttons?”

 

“I don’t know,” She whispers to the pillow.

 

“So you have somewhere to stash your gum on the way down.” He grins wide and satisfied down at her, turns and settles on his back next to her bed jolting under his fill of weight, crowding her, arm stretching over her head, he pushes his hips up, lets them fall, over and over with his cock bobbing until she notices and then he laughs at the look on her face.

 

“Do you feel it?”

 

Her feet are sliding against the sheets and her naked ribs flare, thighs rubbing and her face turning into the space of his side. She touches her mouth, and then presses the same fingers over his face, cheeks, eyelids, sighs and tells him she likes his face better this way. Human. Man instead of reptile. He looks up at the fan spinning, shrugs against the bed. She doesn’t say anything else.

 

“Are you not going to tal-...” he starts, stops, Kate’s head whipped to the side to glare.

 

“Shut up,” her hand knocking gently against his cock, he winces, picks her hand up by the thumb and drops it on her stomach. Up on his elbow he smiles, the heat making the pomade stick of his hair loosen, hard strands falling over his eyes and she pushes it out of the way.

 

And her mouth presses up to his and he puts his hips between her open legs, he leaves a sticky mark on her belly, pets her small breasts and hair and thighs, she sighs and cants up.

 

He paints patterns on her skin in precum and blood and sweat. With his dick and his fingers and his tongue tip and she keens, and its dare stares and no blinking when he pushes in and her insides stretch around him, making room and when she exhales there’s the warm wet kiss of her cunt all around.

 

The bleached wood of the headboard knocks, soft like a sleepy heartbeat on the wall and she looks lost, throat working and lips smashed shut, rolling together like she’s in pain and need and wants help but can’t make words.

 

He inhales, breathes out slow, stops, deep and in her to the root and she opens her shut eyes. He smiles, “So, what’s that taste like?”

 

And her open eyes swim yellow. _She_ says his name, out loud and then there are hands pushing him up, and eyes that bleed back to a different color and Kate telling him to stop with legs curling over his hips while she tells him no and _She_ hisses in his ear, saying something different.

 

“Shut up,” he tells her and he can’t tell anymore who he’s inside of, doesn’t really care, he can smell and taste the leaky salt tears trapped between her eyelashes.

 

“Katie-Kakes.”

 

Her mouth parts open, he folds her knee up against his side, dick all the way in, and nudging until her eyes open. Yellow. Her fangs fall, and her head stretches back, she flicks a tongue, long and serpentine towards him, her face shadows and scales.

 

“I’m hungry.”  She coos, against his ear, hand on the back of his head, moving, soothing and he’s hungry too.

 

At the end it’s her again, just Kate, angry, wounded, and he’s wrung out, all fumes and her venom and mess and he’s ragged against the back of her shoulders, her hot nape, ladder of her spine, her hair hanging over the pillows, hips tilted back and pushed up, on her knees, one hand leaves the humid heat mark of her fingers and palm on the headboard when it finally slips off, he’s gum deep in a carotid and she hoarse and open mouthed against a pillow, teeth marks on the white, there’s smears and blottings of red all over the bed in the shape of knees and fingers and lips and the bony spots of their bodies, she’s been fluttering around him like a blood thrum for awhile, keyed up too hard and he finally pops off, relief flooding him, knees, thighs, dick, guts, everything uncramps and he lets a squall sound out against her skin, an unbeliever seeing God. He pulls out, sticky strings of what they’ve done breaking and leaving wet liquid threads on both of them.

 

Kate shakes. No tears. But silence. And then, “She’s not asleep anymore.”

 

Richie watches the fan, takes the cigarette she’s lit for them to share. “I know. Are you mad?”

 

“No.”

 

“You can’t just wish her away.”

 

“I’m not mad.” She takes the cigarette from him, two puffs passes it back, blows her smoke out.

 

“Then what are you?”

 

She doesn’t answer, just pulls his arm down over her shoulders while he makes room, a little surprised by her sudden need for a cuddle, the intimacy of it, her sudden softness in the aftermath he expected to leave her stony and unmovable, lips on his collar and breasts pressed to the line of his ribs, leg over his, hot little wet flame between her legs on the arch-crest of his hip, she doesn’t answer for so long he thinks she might have started to doze, but her fingers snatch away the last drag of the cigarette, she flicks the butt off the bed onto the floor.

 

She has two maids who will clean up the ashtray floor and the bloody bed and thick sex musk scented room.

 

She sighs, thumb rubbing heat under his navel.

 

Her lips push a mush of a kiss into his neck and her nose nuzzles, he turns his head down to see her face.

 

“I’m hungry.” She mumbles.

 

The sound he makes is one that’s not surprised, just the assent that ‘of, course’ makes in a person’s throat when they don’t say it.

 

“Five years of nothing and now you can taste it. I’ll get you a stripper to eat later, I’m husked.”

 

“Just you.”

 

His eyes open, looks at the top of her head, “Fine.”

 

“That’s the only thing _we_ have in common.”

 

“Who is ‘we’?”

 

“You know.”

 

“Psalms and proverbs aren’t real heavy duty deterrents. Don’t be mad.”

 

“I said I wasn’t.”

 

“But you are.”

 

“Not about that.”

 

Neither Kate or _Her_ wants to have to share.

 

But he doesn’t hear either one say it, out loud, or in his head.

* * *

 

Night services at the church with all the lights and all the songs.

 

Kate’s face smiles and her hands reach out and her words are joyous and full of praise and messages about all things holy and good.

 

But it’s not Kate.

 

And the parishioners she’s touched leave and go home, beat their wives, their kids, hang themselves or they go to bars and hit the bottle harder than they ever have before, get in their cars and kill someone with it, unwanted babies start to grow inside the wombs of teenage girls at parties with boys who don’t know any better and everyone sins and wrath is a balm and God can’t cut anybody down from the traitor’s noose.

* * *

 

A soul chooses its god. Right now his is speaking. Smiling, chin on his shoulder, licking his pulse.

 

He filled her up, sated all that hunger for a little while.

 

“You think mommy and daddy saw what I did with you? God did.”

 

“Stop.”

 

It’s not Kate.

 

But she giggles, rolls her forehead over the back of his neck, and then flattens her front to the planes of his back.

 

His hips roll into the mattress, her calves and feet sway behind her, and slowly she goes on knees and hands and he turns over, breathes open mouthed and watches her hand snake between his legs, fingers stroking under his sac, counting his pulse _1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12…_ fast, faster, fastest.

 

She looks down and then pushes her swaying hair back with her arm, only it smooths over his skin and strokes his thighs as she moves lower, kisses on the underside of his dick and he wonders what her daddy would say now. She chuckles, and punctures him, his legs pull up and it hurts, stings, he paints her hair with his orgasm, she pouts later.

 

He doesn’t know who she is. It’s impossible to tell and the eyes mean nothing now.

* * *

 

Except, things change. Winter comes, and she’s sleepy all the time. Snakes hibernate.

 

He speaks to her from next to her bed.

 

_...And badass motherfuckers, amen._

 

And come spring she smiles. Kate smiles.

* * *

 

It's summer and the idol has crumbled and snakes are dying, dried up curlicues on the desert sand. Her boots leave marks in the sand.

 

She says a Psalm and then a Proverb to make him wrong.

 

God’s vengeance.

 

Striking down, lightning, dry and blue. Wind that ruins skin like sand-paper. It’s Kate. She’s a tempest, things and demons turned into pillars of salt tossed over his shoulder, they leave the devil behind. And she makes him a believer.

 

Souls and Gods and Sermons and Perfect Love move from her skin to his hands and mouth under so many stars in the firmament of heaven, heart of the desert made of glass and she’s sweet and soft and burns white hot supernova heat below him and venom like consecrated wine, blood like blood, like it’s always been at the beginning and end of time.

 

He could do without her talk of God instead of _oh_ , _god_ when he’s inside of her and she’s on top, arms spread wide or over her head, like she’s dancing, for him, on him. Sometimes he can fuck her into silence and it makes something human in him preen behind the scales.

 

But, they, them, him and her. They have the knowledge of good and evil and only snakes guard the tree in the garden.

 

He wants to find his brother, Kate doesn’t mind. She’s done what she’s needed to, and it’s her turn to watch over someone else.

 


End file.
